170 lines
11 KiB
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170 lines
11 KiB
Plaintext
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_____________ _/_/ | | \ \ _/_/ _____________
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| ___________ _/_/ | | \ \ _/_/ ___________ |
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| | _/_/_____ | | > > _/_/_____ | |
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| | /________/ | | / / /________/ | |
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| | c o m m u n i c a t i o n s | |
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| |________________________________________________________________| |
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|____________________________________________________________________|
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...presents... The Bird
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by Obscure Images
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>>> a cDc publication.......1993 <<<
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-cDc- CULT OF THE DEAD COW -cDc-
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____ _ ____ _ ____ _ ____ _ ____
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|____digital_media____digital_culture____digital_media____digital_culture____|
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The cigarette dropped onto the heaping pile of used-up butts. A hand
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reached out to the pack on the table and got ready to add another. His name
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was Sydney Allen, a tall young man with short black hair and an incongruous
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penchant for both the absurd and the most sober of events.
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The room was small and completely full. There wasn't a single inch of the
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room that was bare. The walls were covered with Xeroxed photographs, ripped-
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apart newspapers, and all sorts of inane items. The floors and the table space
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were overflowing with piles of books, compact discs, computer printouts and
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ashtrays; all of which were full.
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Sydney was sitting in front of a computer terminal: working and not
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working at the same time. In-between drags on an unending flow of cigarettes,
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he muttered and swore at the computer or at something that happened to flutter
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across his mind, distracting him from his work. Strangely enough the only
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thing that didn't seem to be annoying him was the torrent of obscenely loud
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music that was always on. He turned off the computer and abandoned the work
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for the night. Sydney got out of the chair and turned the music off. He
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stubbed out the last smoke of the night and threw off some of the accumulated
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rubble on his futon, before heading out of the room to go to the bathroom. On
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his way out of the bathroom, he paused long enough to take a pill, a
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tranquilizer, to keep the fear away.
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The futon was hard and uncomfortable, and Sydney glanced at the clock by
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his bed. It told him that it was six in the morning. He stared at the ceiling
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and spent a few moments doing calculations before he closed his eyes and fell
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asleep. Despite the time, the room was pitch black. Sydney had taped opaque
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black plastic bags over the only window in the room. Daylight was painful to
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Sydney's eyes so he tried to avoid it as much as he could.
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When he got out of bed later in the day, he threw on some dirty clothes
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from off of the floor and wandered out into the living room where his roommates
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were watching television. They exchanged greetings, and Sydney went into the
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kitchen where he grabbed some food and a can of soda from the refrigerator. He
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joined his roommates in the living room and set his food down on the table in
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front of the couch, then picked up a half-empty pack of cigarettes and lit one
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up. They were watching cartoons. This one was a classic Tom and Jerry
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episode. It was one that they had all seen many times before, nonetheless
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laughing intermittently.
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After an hour of watching television and talking to his roommates which
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soon left to go to their jobs, Sydney was left to watch the news for a while
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before deciding what to do that day. As he absorbed the news, his mind
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wandered to concerns about his health. His breathing was becoming raspy from
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all the cigarettes, and his body ached all over from sleeping on the lousy bed.
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If he looked out the sliding door to the porch, he could see the small forest
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behind the house. That and the small floating particles that swirled around
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his eyes. As soon as the tiny spots became prominent, he averted his eyes to
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temporarily clear up the translucent miasma.
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Sydney was bored with the television, bored with all of the magazines and
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the books, and decided to get some work done. He picked up the phone and
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dialed up the voice mail service that he used to keep in touch with his
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employers. The messages that were there were dismal. All the projects he had
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been working on had either been finished, nearly finished, or canceled
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altogether, said the recorded voice of his boss. The computers and other
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equipment that Sydney had been using were to be returned to the company as soon
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as possible, and they would call him when they needed his services again, the
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voice continued. Sydney hung up the phone, and stared at the wall for a while,
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pondering his enrollment in the ranks of the unemployed. Another cigarette
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appeared in his hand, but was short-lived due to the increased frequency of
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drags. When the smoke was finished, he tossed the butt into an ashtray and
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went back to his room to think.
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The loss of the job wasn't terribly frightening to Sydney, it was the
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implications of not being able to survive that made him shake. He closed his
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eyes and let himself drift into the music that was oozing out of the speakers
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in the corners of his room. Behind his eyes, images of losing his possessions
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materialized. Not for a month or two yet, I've got enough cash stashed away to
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last a while, he thought. After that time there would be nothing. He sighed,
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got dressed, and walked down to the convenience store to get some cigarettes
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and a newspaper.
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He scanned through the classified section of the newspaper and circled all
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of the jobs that he felt qualified for. Then he prepared a resume and set out
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to the post office to mail them. When he got back to the house, he called up
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his mother and told her about the job. She said that she felt bad about it,
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and if he needed to find a place to stay he could come back home for a while.
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He told her that he'd let her know if he needed to take her up on the offer.
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He hung up the phone and began to pack up all the equipment that he had
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received from the company. When it was all in the shipping boxes, he loaded
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them into his car and took them down to the closest UPS depot. He gave the
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lady at the counter the company's UPS account number, and watched sadly as some
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men came out from the back and carried the boxes away. He said "Thanks" to the
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woman behind the desk and left the office and went home.
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A week passed, and he began to get replies from the places he'd sent
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resumes to so he called them and made appointments for interviews. He then
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began sorting through his portfolio, picking out his best work for the
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interviews. One by one he went to the interviews, showed them his work, and
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explained that he was still going to school to get his degree. For the most
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part they liked his work, but then they'd explain that they had at least twenty
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other applicants with work as good as his, but with more experience and a
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degree. They all said that they'd keep him on file in case they needed someone
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else, but Sydney knew that with the way the economy was going, it would be
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lucky if the guy they hired lasted a year with any of them.
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To keep some money coming in, he got a job at a fast food place working
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forty hours a week. One night, after working for a couple of weeks his
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girlfriend came over with all of the stuff he had given her. She'd come over
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to give it back and tell Sydney that she was seeing someone else. Sydney, who
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was on edge from work at the time, picked her up and threw her through the
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screen door. He turned back inside, and his roommates hastily made their ways
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to their rooms.
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Sydney went back to his room and cried. The tears turned into rage, then
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turned back into an aching despair. After a few hours he couldn't take it
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anymore, so he called his now former girlfriend, who told him that if he ever
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called her again she would call the police and then hung up on him. The pain
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that was shredding his mind was getting unbearable, so he took the cigarette
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that he was smoking and pressed it onto the smooth skin on his forearm. The
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tobacco smell in the room quickly was replaced by the smell of burning flesh.
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He stared at his arm as the red cherry at the tip blistered the skin, and then
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began to part it as he ground the cigarette in. He was blinded with the pain,
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his eyes were watering and he screamed. The cigarette ran out of air and
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stopped burning, so he let it drop onto the floor. All that was left was the
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white hot pain in his forearm. In the back of his mind the despair hid, but
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Sydney was allowed the luxury of unthinking pain if only for a little while.
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A week later the physical pain was faded to a minor discomfort, but the
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despair of the past month was as strong as it had been. He'd been reduced to a
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machine. Get up, go to work, come home, go to bed. No more reading, talking,
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listening to music. Nothing.
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On his day off Sydney sat in his room moping around, staring at the black
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plastic on the windows. He decided to rip it all off. The light in the room
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temporarily blinded him, but as his eyes adjusted he began to see the object in
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the tree that was just slightly below his window. It was a bird's nest.
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Inside the nest there was a baby bird laying on its side with its beak
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contorted into a grotesque last squawk. Sydney looked at the bird for a few
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seconds and began to laugh.
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_______ __________________________________________________________________
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/ _ _ \|Demon Roach Undrgrnd.806/794-4362|Kingdom of Shit.....806/794-1842|
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((___)) |Cool Beans!..........510/THE-COOL|Polka AE {PW:KILL}..806/794-4362|
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[ x x ] |The Alcazar..........401/782-6721|Moody Loners w/Guns.415/221-8608|
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\ / |The Works............617/861-8976|Finitopia...........916/673-8412|
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(' ') |ftp - zero.cypher.com in pub/cdc |ftp - ftp.eff.org in pub/cud/cdc|
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(U) |==================================================================|
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.ooM |Copr. 1993 cDc communications by Obscure Images 04/01/93-#224|
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\_______/|All Rights Drooled Away. SIX GLORIOUS YEARS of cDc|
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